


Three of Them

by causeimdifferent



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Emotional Abuse, Hurt, M/M, Physical Abuse, Rape, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 15:58:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2394377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/causeimdifferent/pseuds/causeimdifferent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas is 15 and gets assaulted by three men in the course of which he travels back in time to touch on all the important and painful relationships he has had in his life up to this point.</p><p> </p><p>“What …?” Thomas stepped back. "This was not ..." He turned round to face the man with the signet ring who had just closed the door behind them.</p><p>His hand turned the key in the lock.</p><p>Click.</p><p>“Did you really think, you’d call the shots?” The man said.<br/>His smile had disappeared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three of Them

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: This story contains rape and makes reference to physical and emotional abuse. It is potentially intense, so beware.

_This story is influenced by the discussions on tumblr about some of Thomas behavioural patterns that might indicate childhood trauma of various sorts. See posts[here](http://gascon-en-exil.tumblr.com/post/98752559927/causeimdifferent) and [here](http://causeimdifferent.tumblr.com/post/98818175336/tragic-cranky-porcelain-doll)._

 

The man’s hands are pressing Thomas’ wrists so hard into the carpet that his fingers go numb.

He’s given up struggling.

They are grown men.

Three of them.

Thomas is just 15.

And alone.

 

They have pushed him around enough.  
Blood is dripping from his nose and his lip is split open after a punch by a hand wearing a signet ring.

Thomas turns to feigning death mode.  
Usually this happens by default when his body gets hurt and there is no other way out but his soul temporarily leaving to watch from somewhere above, like a lizard sticking to the ceiling.

But now for once Thomas tries in vain and his soul just stays put in his body.

A body about to be ravished, pinned to the floor.

*

“Up for a little cash on the side?” the man with the signet ring said, barely 10 minutes ago. It is made of lapis lazuli, the engraving looks like a cross between a tulip and a crown.  
The man is old, but not as old as Henry, the man Thomas works for. As a valet. Officially.

Inofficially as so much more.

Thomas runs errands, polishes shoes, serves tea – and shares his bed, when Henry calls for it. Which is often.

Way too often.

But he is nice to Thomas. Mostly - if Thomas is nice to him first.

Then Henry listens to him as if what he says and thinks matters. He can be witty, intelligent and funny.  
Sometimes he even makes Thomas laugh.

And he owns a lush town house. Which is a nice place to stay. Especially in winter.  
Henry lives here all by himself - and four servants. A butler, a cook, a housemaid – and Thomas.

Thomas has been working for Henry for four weeks now. He picked him up on a park bench.  
At just the right moment when Thomas was so broke, hungry and cold that he was planning to pickpocket someone just to get caught and locked up. Because detention at the police station would be warmer than the looming November night, and perhaps they would even give him some dry bread to chew on.

Henry was so very nice to him on that first day of theirs, lovely, really. So friendly and caring, that Thomas almost started to believe he didn’t have in mind what men who started to talk to him on the streets usually had in mind.

It had taken Thomas a mere week in London after his father had kicked him out to learn what he was up against as a young and pretty face all by himself on the streets.

Henry bought Thomas a fancy coat and a cap, because he was shaking. And maybe even more so because it made him look posh.

Then he took him to an art gallery and showed him around. Thomas had never been to a place like that and no one had ever talked to him about art. He would most probably have been bored pretty quickly. Had not Henry made the canvases come to life. With adventurous stories. Witty and exciting. Framing those scenes of ships struggling in rough waters and gales tearing at their sails. And of landscapes with temples that looked like something from a fairy tale but Henry said "this is India" and "I use to go there often". To trade tea and furniture.

Thomas hung on his lips, so when they stepped back into the bleak November night and Henry bid him good-bye he felt like crying. Of course he said “yes”, as Henry turned around again, oh so skillfully timed, to ask: “Say, wouldn’t you fancy some nice dinner in front of a cozy fire. Why won’t you be my guest tonight?”

The food was Indian. The first of that sort Thomas had ever had. Something with chicken. Spicy and foreign and good. Henry told even more stories about India, when they lounged in front of the fireplace. On a rug made of some animal's hide, surrounded by cushions, their fabric so delicate it seemed to come from a dream. As did the rest of Henrys house which looked like a fancy shop for colonial furniture – or the way Thomas imagined such a shop to look like. Cabinets, bookshelves, armchairs with exotic inlays and carvings, trinkets like little statues, masks and vases everywhere – nothing like anything Thomas had ever seen before.

This place was magical. Thomas was floating.

Especially when Henry brought on the wine.

“Do you like red wine?” he asked. “I would not know”, Thomas replied. He was just 15 and red wine was for grown ups and toffs. All he had ever tasted out of curiosity was ale and hard liquor, because that’s what his father used to have. Afterwards Thomas had stayed away from it – because drink turned his father in a man he didn’t want to have anything in common with: Angry, red faced and brutal.

Thomas didn’t care much about the taste of the wine, of which Henry said it cost more than a passage to India.  
But it warmed him up so nicely on the inside. Made him fuzzy and careless.

And easy bait.

Thomas was too drunk to even think of the possibility to tell Henry to stop.

*

Right now Thomas almost wishes he was drunk again. Everything hurts less, intoxicated. Yet most likely he is the only one sober in Henry’s house tonight. Henry is celebrating a particularly successful year of his company and has invited an armada of high ranking employees and business partners.

Like the man wearing the signet ring. Skin like cooled off porridge behind a beard the color of dirty sand. Eyes, pale blue and watery, reminding Thomas of jellyfish, stranded on the beach in Weston-super-Mare, where his grandparents lived. Strangely translucent and unfocused as if he was not really looking at Thomas - but through him without seeing him at all.

Thomas has been offered money before and he knows it is always just for one thing.

Even though that one thing comes in different varieties. Some men are content with feeling him up. Thomas has gone along with that before. He has also rubbed men off for pay. But that’s where he draws the line.

Henry is the exception to the rule.

When Thomas closes his eyes he sometimes manages to imagine that the person touching and fucking him is not some 49 year old toff with a pot belly and toothpick legs, crooked teeth and ginger hair. Then Thomas can even enjoy the sensation of being stimulated by him. Henry is crafty.

Thomas looked across his shoulder, searching the crowded room with his eyes for Henry. “Henry won’t mind”, the man grinned. Thomas didn’t want to go with him, but then again … money was always a good idea – and everyone around was obviously rich, so why not milk the cow? “I want the money first”, Thomas said. “Oh?” the man chuckled, “I see, Henry’s knack for business has already rubbed off.” “And I won’t do everything”, Thomas added quickly. The man’s eyes were bloodshot and something about his ways reminded Thomas of his father. There was something shifty in his face, in the way he held himself. Just like his father, before he struck.

“Let’s negotiate this somewhere else, come on.”  
The man nudged Thomas into the corridor away from the hustle and bustle to steer him into Henry’s private sitting room.

  
Abandoned except for two men, who looked at him just as eagles eye their prey. One had been sitting behind Henry’s desk, his feet on the table top. He wore glasses and had a moustache resembling a red squirrel’s tail. The other one had been leaning against the armrest of an armchair, its moss green color almost merging with the shade of his suit. They got up and started walking towards him, their faces cold and petrous, like a statue's.

“What …?” Thomas stepped back. "This was not ..." He spun round to face the man with the signet ring who had just closed the door behind them.

His hand turned the key in the lock.

Click.

“Did you really think, you’d call the shots?” The man said.  
His smile had disappeared.

Thomas sensed what was coming.

He tried to cry for help but he didn’t get any further than “Hen …”

A fist to the stomach made him falter, another one to the face sent him to the floor. When he gasped for air, something dry and scratchy was stuffed into his mouth that smelled of worn sock and made him retch. Something, perhaps a tie, cut into the corners of his mouth and was bound tightl around his head to hold the gag in place.  
His face was shoved into the carpet. One of the men sat down on his back, almost crushing him, to pin him down and to take hold of his wrists.

*

“Be a good boy now”, the man breathes damply against Thomas’s neck, as one of the other two starts pulling his trousers off , fingernails scratching across his bare skin, reminding him of Henry’s fingernails that are always a little bit too long. Even thinking about them and his fingers yellowed by countless cigars turns his stomach. Thomas always tries not to look at them, yet keeps catching himself doing it.

Thomas attempts a last stand by kicking his legs as the trousers are getting peeled off of them. The man sitting on his back briefly lets go of one of Thomas’ wrists to grab his hair and bump his forehead against the floor. “Behave now”.

Thomas’s naked legs are spread apart and held like that in a steely grip by the ankles.  
Thomas doesn’t want to show weakness, but his panic has other plans. Against his will he wails into the sock in his mouth.

Not only does his soul not want to leave his body, Thomas feels everything even more intensely than usually. As if his skin has been rubbed raw by sandpaper in advance.

“You go first”, the man holding his legs says. “Oh yes”, comes the voice from Signet Ring, lifting himself up from Thomas’ ribcage at least letting him breathe freely again. “You hold him, Nigel.” A different pair of hands close around Thomas' wrists.

As Thomas’ buttcheeks are spread apart he starts to shake from head to toe. “Tight little virgin arse”, says the man between his legs and gives him a sharp smack.  
“Dream on, he’s been working for Henry”, one of the other two snickers.

Something wet and hard bores into Thomas. He bucks a last time in protest. Desperately. And futile.

The prying finger hurts, and the added second one even more. Thomas is used to deal with fear and threat and physical pain. But being exposed and used like this is different. And worse than anything Thomas has ever been through before.

Worse than his father beating him down, after a slow day at the clock shop.

Worse than his best friend backstabbing him after they were caught exploring each other inappropriately.

“He made me do it”, Neil had said, even though in reality it had been almost always the other way round. Not that Thomas had ever minded Neil leading him on. Neil was his best friend – his first love -  and his haven with his friendly mother and father who were so different from Thomas’ parents who had no love for each other and barely any for their kids.

Of course Thomas’ father took sides with Neil, because he never took sides with Thomas as a rule.

And for the first time ever Neil's parents were furious with him.

Thomas received his last beating by his father before he was kicked out.

He had no idea where to go, his only refuge – Neil and his parents – gone. So he just started walking along the main road to nowhere in particular too shocked to cry or to feel anything much. Until a man stopped his car to ask him where he was headed. “Wherever _you_ are”, Thomas had replied. The man was on his way to London. And so Thomas ended up there.

*

“Oh, we all know, Henry’s been having his fun with this one here.” Yes. Thomas knows the feel of a cock urging his way inside him. And that is, what is happening right now.

“Ease up or we’ll cut you open”, a voice heaves against Thomas’ neck, leaving a film of dampness on his skin. Thomas’ body convulses with dry sobs. “Ease – the fuck – up”, comes the constrained command once more, as the man intensifies his attempts to intrude against Thomas' will.

“Get a move on”, says the man holding Thomas’ wrists, “I’m ready for my turn.”

“Let me go”, Thomas whimpers, yet the gag reduces his words into guttural sobs.

“The easier you make it for us, the easier you make it for yourself, little boy”, Signet Ring wheezes and somehow he breaks his way at last.

He starts pumping, almost frantically, ripping into Thomas, causing a searing pain inside. His labored breath mixing with the sound of skin hitting against skin.

Again. And again. And again.

Two more men to go.

 

Help.

Is all that is on Thomas’ mind.

Help.

 

Less a plea, than a wish for someone to be at his side when he needs it.  
Like Neil was, once, or Thomas' older sister Martha, before they both let him down.

The only two people he ever trusted.

Martha had stepped in between, when his father lashed out at him and went down in his place.  
More than once.  
Martha was brave.

But even she could not take it longer than necessary. When she was 16 and he was ten she went away. Never to be seen again.When Thomas asked for her his father glowered at him, and his mother shushed him quiet. So he stopped asking. But he cuddled with her bear, a little soft toy that she had left behind.

Until his father found out and threw it away.

*

“Why is this door locked!” A muffled voice intruding from the corridor. “Who is in there? Open up!”

Almost in unison the men ease up on Thomas, spluttering all sorts of curses under their breath.

Furious rattling at the doorknob. “Open up!”

Henry.

Even though they have let go of him, Thomas needs a moment before he manages to move his limbs.  
His numbed hands start to prickle like needlepoints.

More banging against the door. Louder now. Henry can have a temper.

The noose holding his gag in place is torn away and Thomas spits it out.

“Be right there, Henry, old sport”, one of the men shouts.

Thomas is pulled to his feet. His trousers are pushed into his arms.  
“Put them on, goddammit.”

Thomas manages, somehow, even though he can barely keep on his feet and his hands are shaking badly.

As Signet Ring unlocks the door to a red faced Henry blundering in Thomas is still not wearing shoes.  
He just stands there, in the middle of the room, lost, and everybody stares at him.

“What’s been going on in here?!” Henry bellows.

“Your little one was up for some extra favors”, the man with the squirrel moustache has the nerve to say.

“Leave my house. Now”, Henry says, his voice dead and quiet. A voice more chilling to the bone than any screamed command.

Thomas bites down and nods, bending down to get his shoes.  
It snowed today. He tries to think of something else.

“No”, Henry says, “you”, and he looks at the men, who are suddenly very much in a hurry.

The noise of the party disappears behind the door closing behind them.

Henry bends down to look Thomas in the eyes: “You are bleeding.”  
Thomas’ hand wanders to his upper lip which feels twice its usual size and sticky with drying blood.

“For God’s sake, Thomas, what just happened in here?” Henry says, and now he sounds concerned.

“Nothing."

“What?”

“Nothing happened”, Thomas says but his words seem to come from somewhere else, flat and hollow.

“I’m fine.”


End file.
